Are You Raising Kids? Or Adults

“Out of student loans and tree-house homes we all would take the latter”
(Twenty One Pilots, “Stressed Out”)

In the hit song “Stressed Out,” Twenty One Pilots’s Tyler Joseph longs for the ability to “turn back time, to the good old days…when nothing really mattered.” He wants to go back to childhood, where he (along with so many of his millennial generation) won’t have to face the stresses of debt and work.

In short, he wants to still be a kid, and he’s definitely not alone (who doesn’t?). But obviously aging is inevitable. Maturing into an adult, however, is optional.

Unfortunately we parents have been actually making it harder to do just that over the last few decades. Somehow we turned parenting into “raising kids.” This is a ridiculous phrase, when we think about it—Does a corn farmer raise niblets? Does a tree farmer raise saplings?

The truth is this: We cannot keep raising kids and raising kids, and then complain that’s all we end up with…kids.

This is why we changed the subtitle on the 10th Anniversary Edition of ScreamFree Parenting to this: How to Raise Amazing Adults by Learning to Pause More, and React Less.

The world needs more adults. People mature enough to make their own decisions, fulfill their own obligations, and own their mistakes. And that’s our real job as parents, to start raising adults instead of kids.

Here’s a way to begin: Name one thing you’re still doing for your son or daughter that you know they need to do for themselves.